Free Mine Tomorrow by Jackie Braun

has to be good for you, right? I’d eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I thought I could get away with it.”
    His gaze skimmed down. “I think you could get away with it.”
    Deciding to keep the moment light, she asked, “Are you flirting with me, Mr. Prescott?”
    “I call ’em like I see ’em, Mrs. Prescott.”
    Mrs. Prescott.
Was it only the way he said it that caused a tingle to shoot up her spine? She shook off the thought.
    “Wh-what’s your favorite food?”
    “Anything hot and homemade,” he replied.
    “That’s unfortunate, since we both know I’m not the best cook.”
    He was back to teasing. “And here I thought you were perfect.”
    “Far from it, I’m afraid.”
    “Not from where I’m sitting.”
    Although he smiled, his tone was serious. Her heart knocked out a few extra beats and Devin found herself wishing she could freeze the moment and stay with him forever.

Chapter Ten
    “Tell me about your family,” Devin said.
    They had polished off the hot turkey sandwiches and were now working on their pie.
    “What is it you want to know?” Gregory asked.
    “Anything…everything. It’s a first date, remember? Assume I know nothing.”
    “There’s not a lot to tell. I’m an only child. My father was a lawyer who spent more time building his career than paying attention to his wife and child, so my mother packed a suitcase when I was six and we went to live with her parents. He died of a massive heart attack a month later.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    He accepted her sympathy with a nod before going on. “My mother was devastated. When she moved out, she’d wanted to get his attention, make him see reason. Instead…”
    “That must have been a very difficult time.”
    “I don’t remember much about it except that she was sad for a long time. Then one day she woke up and told me life was too short to live in the past. She said she was taking a trip, and that I was going to stay with my grandparents. She claimed she wouldn’t be away long.”
    “She never came back,” Devin murmured.
    It was impossible not to draw parallels between his mother’s abandonment and, later, his wife’s.
    “She wrote occasionally and called on my birthdays, but no, she didn’t come back. When I was fifteen, my grandparents got a telegram from her. She was ill, dying. We traveled to California. That’s where she’d been living. But we arrived too late.”
    “I’m so sorry.” She covered his hand with hers.
    His father had broken his mother’s heart, and then his mother had done the very same thing to Gregory.
    “It was a long time ago.”
    But he missed her.
    “What about your grandparents?”
    “They died within six months of each other when I was in college.”
    “Any other family?”
    He shook his head. “They were all I had.”
    The last thing she wanted was to make him sad, so she told him, “We can talk about something else, if you’d like.”
    “All right. Let’s talk about you. The same rules apply.” He smiled then. “Tell me everything.”
    “What if you’ve already heard it?”
    “Doesn’t matter,” he said with a shake of his head. “I want to hear it again. You can’t bore me, Devin.”
    His words had her smiling. “Let’s see. Well, as you know, I have a younger sister.”
    “Emily. Yes. You mentioned her earlier when we were in Times Square.” If he found it odd that she hadn’t mentioned her before, he didn’t say so. Rather, he noted, “It sounds as if the two of you are very close.”
    “We are. Our parents died when she was barely a teenager. I was in college at the time, so I became her legal guardian.”
    His brows quirked up. “You raised her.”
    She shrugged. “I guess so, although Em was pretty self-sufficient by that point. It’s not like I had to change diapers or anything.”
    “Still, that couldn’t have been easy. You had to step into the role of parent.”
    “I’m just grateful we got to stay together. I don’t know what I would